Hello everyone,
first of all: I’m a total noob regarding asterisk, currently I’m just trying to develop a new concept for my moms office. I’m more or less familiar with IT, so I hope I can crawl my way through asterisk as well.
Here is what it is about: We currently have a ISDN point-to-point connection (that should be the right word if google isn’t fooling me; “Anlagenanschluss” in german) with 2 concurrent lines (1x NTBA, 2 B channels for those who are familiar with the german specifications).
In future I want to move to a VOIP/SIP solution, but right now I still need the ISDN connections because of bandwidth issues. So my plan is to set up a asterisk (perhabs asterisk NOW) server, either on a raspberry pi or small x86 hardware. Within the office I’ll use DECT mobile phones (perhabs GigasetC610A IP), we currently plan to use 4-5 mobile phones. Additionally I want to set up a fax server to get rid of the analog fax machine and all the paper printing…
Externally it is 1 ISDN connection with the number xxxxx-0 up to xxxxx-9.
So the overall telephony is a pretty small set up. The reason I started looking into asterisk is a) that I want to use a fax server in future (which is actually not done by asterisk itself, as far as I understand it; but I need some kind of communication server for this solution) and b) because I need an interactive pre selection for the main number xxxxx-0 (something like “if you want XY, press 1. If you want ZZ, press 2”).
My impression is, asterisk is a little bit too much for my needs. But the pre selection thing is kind of hard to find somewhere else. And if I find something, those solutions are not cheap and they are often limited to a certain amount of SIP connections etc. So why not go for a “big solution” right away?
All that said: If I don’t want to use a x86 hardware + internal ISDN-card, I need some kind of media gateway, right?
Does anyone have experience with the bintec/elmeg RT1202?
bintec-elmeg.com/en/bintec-RT1202-181.html
Regarding the manufacturer, it’s a specific media gateway.
I’m familiar with their router family (at least with the older models) and they are not too expensive. Is it a good choice?
Thanks for any feedback in advance,
helge